Democrat Max Baucus rules out 7th Senate term

Becomes sixth in party to call it quits, 8th overall

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Senator Max Baucus was joined by his wife, Melodee Hanes, in Washington on Tuesday after it was announced that Baucus, after 36 years in the Senate, will not seek reelection.

By David Espo and Matt Gouras
Associated Press
April 24, 2013

WASHINGTON — Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus of Montana announced plans Tuesday to retire at the end of his term after a career of enormous power and notable independence, producing both collaboration and conflict with fellow Democrats on major tax and health care legislation.

‘‘I don’t want to die here with my boots on. There is life beyond Congress,’’ the 71-year-old Baucus said in a telephone interview.

He became the eighth senator to announce retirement plans for 2014, and the sixth Democrat. One public poll recently suggested he would have faced a difficult challenge if he had sought a seventh term.

Republicans must gain six seats in 2014 to win a majority, and they said the retirement enhanced their prospects.

Yet Democrats were encouraged when the former Democratic governor, Brian Schweitzer, who recently stepped down after two terms, swiftly expressed interest in the race.

In a brief statement, President Obama said Baucus ‘‘has been a leader on a broad range of issues that touch the lives of Americans across the country.’’

Senator Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican and Baucus’s frequent legislative partner, was complimentary, too. ‘‘We ran the Finance Committee for 10 years together, and every bill except for three or four was bipartisan,’’ he said in a statement. ‘‘The Senate will be worse off as a deliberative body when Senator Baucus leaves.’’

In a written statement, Baucus sketched an ambitious agenda for the rest of his term, topped by an overhaul of the tax code.

‘‘Our country and our state face enormous challenges — rising debt, a dysfunctional tax code, threats to our outdoor heritage and the need for more good-paying jobs,’’ he said, adding several Montana-specific priorities as well.

Baucus, a fifth-generation Montanan, was elected to the Senate in 1978 after two terms in the House. He became the top Democrat on the Finance Committee in early 2001. He has held the position ever since on the panel — which has jurisdiction over taxes, Medicare, Medicaid, health care and trade — as chairman when his party held a majority and as senior member of the minority when Republicans were in power.

The panel has a long tradition of bipartisanship, but Baucus ascended to power in an era of increasing partisanship in Congress.

Many Democrats were unhappy when he worked with Republicans to enact the tax cuts that President George W. Bush won in 2001.

And then again in 2004 when Congress pushed through a GOP plan to create a new prescription drug benefit under Medicare, a measure that most Democrats opposed as a giveaway to the large drug companies.

Baucus stood with fellow Democrats in 2005 when Bush proposed legislation to partially privatize Social Security, an epic battle that ended in defeat for the president’s effort.

He played a central role in the enactment of Obama’s watershed health care legislation in 2010, although some inside his party complained that precious momentum was lost while he spent months on bipartisan negotiations that ultimately proved fruitless.

More recently, Baucus has expressed opposition to Democratic proposals to use an overhaul of the tax code as a means of raising additional revenue. He was one of four members of his party to oppose the budget the leadership brought to the floor with a requirement to that effect.

On other issues large and small, Baucus’s voting record reflected his rural state.

Most recently, he voted against legislation that Obama backed to expand background checks for gun purchasers.

During the debate on the budget, he was the only Democrat to vote for a proposal to reopen White House tours. Most members of his party viewed the GOP measure as an attempt to embarrass Obama, but it would also have meant more money for clearing snow from the entrances to Yellowstone National Park, a portion of which is in Montana.

Possible Republican candidates include former governor Marc Racicot; former representative Denny Rehberg, who lost to Baucus in 1996 and to Jon Tester last fall; former representative Rick Hill and Representative Steve Daines.

State Senator Champ Edmunds of Missoula and former state senator Corey Stapleton had already announced they would run against Baucus.

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